THE MOVIE

Cameron Diaz gets wet at the car wash!

What many of you may not realise is that besides running Futuregamez I work in a school. At the moment I run the IT Technical team, but I am also a qualified teacher which I did for a couple of years a while ago. So it was with much interest, and a general liking for Cameron Diaz, that I checked out Bad Teacher hoping it would generate a few laughs.

Elizabeth Halsey (Cameron Diaz) is a foulmouthed, ruthless, and inappropriate teacher. She drinks, gets high, and can't wait to marry a meal ticket to get out of her bogus day job. When she's dumped by her fiancé, she sets her sights on a rich, handsome substitute (Justin Timberlake) while shrugging off the advances of the school gym teacher (Jason Segel). The consequences of her wild and outrageous schemes give her students, coworkers, and even herself an education like no other!

Director Jake Casdan, whose previous movie was the hilariously underrated Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, has created another comedy that often pushes the bounds of acceptability. There's no way a teacher would get away with the same that Cameron Diaz's character does, but damn, I bet almost every teacher has thought about it at some stage.

Lucy Punch is brilliant as Amy and Justin Timberlake is solid too.

Some moments in this film are pure gold; a sequence in the gym where kids need to answer questions correctly or face punishment, calling a kid "Twilight", selling off the Lost and Found items, the "new" championship banners, and pretty much anything from Lucy Punch as Amy. Lucy pretty much steals the scenes she's in and lifts the entire movie. Finally Phyllis Smith (from the US version of The Office) brings a heartfelt performance as Lynn, someone we can all relate to in some way.

Of course there are plenty of great young actors and actresses playing the students in this film but I wanted to point out Kathryn Newton who plays Chase in the film - she's a delight to watch, and lights up the screen. Kaitlyn Dever is also impressive as Sasha. I hope, and expect, to see a lot more from these young actresses in future.

The Blu-Ray version of Bad Teacher includes an extended version of the film which runs for 97 minutes, 5 minutes longer than the theatrical version. Fortunately the people that made this disc put in the option to have a marker (an apple) on-screen when the new scenes are being shown - most often the more explicit scenes and comments.

Perhaps my views on this film are slightly skewed due to my history of being a teacher, and indeed there are moments in this film where I just sat there going "hell yar, if only we could do that". This isn't the greatest comedy but if you like Cameron Diaz, and don't mind foul language, then this is probably worth checking out.

VIDEO
Presented in the film’s original theatrical 1.85:1 aspect ratio Bad Teacher is a great, natural, looking film. The video has been encoded with the AVC MPEG-4 codec and often sits well above 30Mbps according to our PS3, even in in the quieter, more static, screens.

Cameron Diaz is radiant as ever.

If we do have one complaint about the video it's that it has a little bit of a "warm" look to it with skin tones appearing a little on the red side. Still that's probably the intention of the the filmmakers, and not a transfer issue.

AUDIO
Bad Teacher is presented on Blu-Ray with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (16-bit/48Khz) which is crystal clear at all times and when music kicks in sounds wonderful. It must be said though that this is quite a front heavy soundtrack with restricted use of surround sound channels, but given the dialogue driven nature of the film that's quite understandable. It's pretty rare these days that we get a "dud" audio track with any issues these days more to do with the original audio mixing, not the encoding for Blu-Ray. The only extremely slight negative is that this is only a 16-bit track, a 24-bit one would be preferred but makes next to no difference in a dialogue driven movie such as this.

Other audio tracks include English Audio Descriptive Service which is a Dolby Digital 5.1 track encoded at 640kbps, German and Spanish DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and Catalan Dolby Digital 5.1 track encoded at 640kbps. Of course the German and Spanish Master Audio tracks are quite impressive with a quality on-par with the main English track.

Subtitles are provided in English, English SDH, German, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Swedish, and Turkish. We sampled the English track and it was accurate to the on-screen dialogue.

EXTRAS
There are a few extras on the Bad Teacher Blu-Ray.

The Blu-Ray transfer for Bad Teacher is impressive.

Jams Yearbook Hidden Moments (HD): Presented as a year book with each of the main characters, each of the characters has some bio information, but then some clips from the film or even some on-set footage. There are 12 staff and students in total shown here with around a minutes footage for each.

Gag Reel (4:58/HD): Yes, it's the required gag reel and for this film is quite profanity laden. Still, some amusing moments especially as I don't think Cameron Diaz is used to so much profanity.

Outtakes (3:33/HD): These outtakes include "Boner", "The Bachelor", "Extended Amy Yell", and "Extended Russell Rejection". Mildly amusing.

Deleted Scenes (5:44/HD): Six deleted scenes are presented on this Blu-Ray including "Dr. Vogel Discusses Breast Enhancement", "Robot Picnic", "Boner Patrol", "Scott reads Tom Sawyer to class", "Springfield State Capital", and "Elizabeth Comforts Student". There are some decent scenes here that could have been put back into the movie.

Way Behind the Scenes with Jason and Justin (5:38/HD): Justin Timberlake and Jason Segal have an amusing discussion about making a film, and various other topics. Not overly detailed or related to the film but somewhat entertaining.

Raising More Then Funds (3:31/HD): This is a look at Cameron Diaz filming the car wash scene and how the filmmakers planned her look.

Phyllis Smith brings some heart to the film as Lynn.

A Very Odd Blacksmith Story (2:08/HD): The blacksmith, who is also one of the writers in the film, talks about the blacksmith name before moving onto Cameron's character. Promotional and pretty pointless.

Swimming with the Dolphins (3:35/HD): This featurette doesn't actually show anyone swimming with dolphins as the title suggests, but looks at the principal's fascination with dolphins.

Good Teacher (4:04/HD): Running for 4 minutes this featurette has the cast and crew talking about what really makes a good teacher.

MovieIQ (HD): MovieIQ is available on this Blu-Ray and provides up to date details on actors and music in each of the scenes. This requires a download from the Internet, but offers information on cast and crew.

OVERALL
It's quite crude, but Bad Teacher was a fairly entertaining movie which has been given a solid transfer, and on Blu-Ray includes some entertaining, although brief, extras.

Review By: Dave Warner

THE MOVIE	7/10
THE VIDEO	8/10
THE AUDIO	9/10
THE EXTRAS	5/10
OVERALL	7/10